"A garden that pleases me is a garden…designed with deliberation" – David Hicks

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PROJECT MOURNING BENCH

For this area, the Vinca has too much movement & energy; the glossy leaves reflect so much light one can hardly make out the ‘star plants’…

So out it went (to a friend’s garden).

The golden club Moss,(Selaginella kraussiana ‘Aurea’) on the other hand, has a matt texture & absorbs the light. It makes a much calmer background which allows the ‘stars’ to shine..

This is so much better. I first added a wheelbarrow of rabbit manure & raked it over the ground. No digging is done here because there are Trillium rhizomes underground. Then I dug up the Selaginella from the path on the other side…

And transplanted it. While I tried for whole ‘sheets ‘ of the moss, it falls apart, so little pieces with roots are pushed into the ground. They will shortly spread to form the carpet needed for this area. All the while…

Cleome supervised.

This type of gardening is really painting beautiful pictures with plants…but the one element the other arts do not have to deal with is TIME. If I was using paints or pencils…it would already be coloured in.

The Star plants are:-

Black Mondo Grass (Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Nigrescens’)

East Indian Holly Fern (Polystichum acrostichoides) and…

Amorphophallus rivieri, a type of voodoo Lilly.. all improved by changing their background.

A good days work all in all, and part of another project started.

“Success depends on simplicity, one plant supplying the quiet background, while the other stands out clearly against it.” – Sylvia Crowe*

Dear Sandra, You are so right. Gardening is, I believe, all about painting pictures with plants. The difference of course is that plants grow, mature and die whereas, usually, paint stays on paper or canvas. Result, one is permanently having to rearrange the composition. Such is the fun!